Dhekoon Day

I am writing after a pretty long time. That is because all these days have been very very monotonous. It was today that was quite eventful. Yesterday I discovered that my room was an infestation of bedbugs. I was a very sorry sight. In the corners of my steel bed were patches of large bedbugs and very icky egg-farms. So today I decided that I must do something about it. Pretty soon many others realized that they had infestations too. Well, people I know in Kolkata don’t even know what bedbugs are. I found out what they are yesterday.
I woke up in the early morning at around 10:30 am. Took the mattress, quilt and pillow off my bed and took them up to the roof under the sun. I took the steel bed (I don’t know how old it was anyway) outside the hostel and threw it under the sun. Since the bed was old, as I mentioned earlier, within braces, one of the legs of the bed broke; well, it nearly broke. I came back to the room, sweep the whole floor clean with a broom (I hadn’t done it in a long time. I got out around a kilogram of dust. Then I poured a mixture of very hot water, kerosene and phenyl all over the floor and brushed the whole floor clean. Left the room o dry under the fan.
I went out, poured nearly boiling hot water into the nooks and corners of the bed outside and left it to dry. I need to justify my actions here. Bedbugs, commonly known as charpoka by Bengalis, and known as ‘dhekoon’ by the locals here, don’t feed on anything but blood. So they don’t intake poisons. So poisons are pretty ineffective. They only die with DDT(Dinitro Diphenyl Trinitro Ethane), but that’s illegal now. They die in hot water and run away from the sunlight. Hence my actions today.
After all this hassle I took a very cleansing cold water bath and fed myself well. Then I came back, studied some, went for tea, chatted for a bit like any other day. By now the sun was going down. I got my bed inside, got the mattress, pillow and quilt from the roof and got my bed ready and fit for a king. You must remember I said that one of the legs of the bed was broken. Well, the king sat on the bed and within a split second and the bed went down like a lead zeppelin. Now, the king is down on the ground.
I freed the bed of all dhekoon, but now it’s broken and I have to replace it. All this hassle for nothing. Shit! Big Shit! I’ll have to apply for a new bed now, and maybe I’ll have to free that one of dhekoon too. Well, I guess it’s just me and my shitty luck.